Well if they hadn’t the original Amiga was intended to be just a games console so it would of done even worse in the professional world. The rest of the Commodore range was pretty much exclusively targeted at the games market and this is why the Commodore logo is very non-intrusive on the early Amigas and why they were only released through proper computer shops, not the toy shops you could purchase any other Commodore computer from at the time.
When Commodore bought it, it was pretty much a computer if I remember correctly from the book “On The Edge”… I also think that it was pretty close that Atari bought it instead.
I think the key to what system people will buy is based on:
- Your current system
- Computing power for the price / Quality / Stability / Ease of use / Program library.
- What your friends have
Some people also consider a hip visual design to be among the top priorities (Mac Users 
Some also seem to think that more expensive always is better (also Mac users ;-)…
So will the new amiga have any chance? Except for selling a couple of machines to the few amigaheads who already owns an Amiga One or something… Nowdays it will be a lot harder to introduce a new computer system compared to the 80’s.
A renoise port would be great 
+1000000000000000 
And how do you measure if this is a success or a failure ?
I think it depends on how high their (A-Eon/Hyperion) expectations are.
If their goal is to release some new hardware and updated software to satisfy the users, and getting enaugh sales so they dont loose money on it, I think they could get that level of success.
If you rate success in markedshares comparable to the Mac or Linux, its another matter.
Given the history of announced new Amiga machines that never apeared, some will rate it a success just if they manage to get the product released at all.
What about if you rate success in being able to buy a new, updated machine in 10 years time?